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ARCADIA’s participation to the 5th Romanian Development Camp (Predeal, July 11th-13th 2012)

ARCADIA was present at the 5th edition of the Romanian Development Camp, organized by the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Romanian NGDO platform (FOND) in Predeal, which took place between 11th and 13th of July. The event tried to involve all the participants in an active debate on Romania’s Development Cooperation Strategy for the 2007-2011 period and in the same time, gather recommendations for the formulation of the upcoming strategy.

The representatives of the Romanian MFA, EuropeAid, UNDP and FOND, present in the first day’s plenary sessions, centered the discussions around the decision to extend the geographic area of the Romanian ODA (from five beneficiary countries to twelve) as follows: Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Tunisia, Lybia, Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan. In terms of the areas of intervention, it was decided that the focus will be on the following sectors: democratic transition, support for agriculture, sustainable economic growth, promoting green energy in the context of climate change and environmental protection. As a positive element, we also appreciated the willingness of the entire Romanian ODA team to share their experiences and the difficulties they have in the implementation of the strategy. On the same note, the guests from Georgia and Moldova also presented their feedback as beneficiaries of Romanian ODA.

Against this background, members of the academia, government authorities (both central and local) and NGOs, organized in working groups, have put forward a series of conclusions which actually represented this year’s edition added value. These also included a critical approach towards the current strategy and its weaknesses, and an agreement was reached on the necessity to improve it.

The Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has launched a public consultation on the legislative reform of Romania’s development cooperation policy.

The main proposed changes refer to:

redefining the concept of “partner state” taking into account the internal economic context;

simplifying the procedures;

clarifying aid programming for each assistance modality;

approving humanitarian aid assistance at MFA level (current approval procedure involves an emergency decision from the Prime Minister and does not allow aid allocation in real time for humanitarian crises);

forming a specialized ODA unit within the MFA and enhancing the personnel scheme with 6 more positions;

The new legislative proposal can be found only in Romanian here and comments can be sent on the MFA address, Aleea Alexandru nr. 31, District 1, Bucharest, 011822 and at uasd@mae.ro until August 3rd 2011.

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ARCADIA’s participation to the 4th Romanian Development Camp (Cluj-Napoca, July 6th-8th 2011)

ARCADIA was once again present at this year’s edition ofthe Romanian Development Camp, organized by the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Romanian NGDO platform, FOND, in Cluj Napoca, between 6th and 8th of July. The debates of the three days were centered on the new donors’ role for the future of development aid architecture.

Benefiting from the input of representatives from the development cooperation sector in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and from the European Commission, the event mainly examined the contribution that the 12 EU member states can bring to the current reform of the European development policy. A special emphasis was placed on the initiative to enhance support for democratization as part of development cooperation policy with a new EU financial instrument – the European Democracy Endowment Fund. Such initiative is based on the experience that former Communist countries have gained in their own processes of democratization and is regarded as the real value added that new member states can bring to the international cooperation policy. At the same time, the audience had the opportunity to understand the perspectives of a broad range of actors, from central to local authorities, as well as civil society organizations, trade unions and companies. The academic sector was also well represented by both students and professors of the Romanian Masters in International Development in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Iaşi and Timişoara.

Alongside the main panels and workshops, the camp presented a series of events, one of which was ARCADIA’s presentation of its mission, vision, activities and professional network. We would like to thank the organizers for having given us the opportunity to present our project of creating a strong Romanian professional community in the field of international development and we welcome participants of the Development Camp to join our efforts.